


The World in Stillness

by feroxargentea



Series: Proximity [2]
Category: Master and Commander - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-09
Updated: 2011-12-09
Packaged: 2017-10-27 03:05:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feroxargentea/pseuds/feroxargentea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack watches Stephen sleep. Sequel to "Proximity", although you don't really need to have read that.<br/>Written for the 2011 perfect_duet Christmas Calendar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World in Stillness

Jack awoke early, his head feeling clearer than it had for several weeks, and no longer as if it had been pounded full of oakum. His limbs, though, were as heavy as ever. He shifted, turning slightly on the pillow, and realised that the heaviness was partly because he was trapped: Stephen must have been flailing in his sleep again and still had an arm and half a leg flung across him.

He lay still for a while, listening for any sign of movement downstairs. Pullings had promised to call again that morning, so Killick was sure to be up long before breakfast, scrubbing the floors, nagging the housekeeper to prepare treats and scolding both of his charges into something approaching neatness. Judging by the dim light seeping through the curtains, however, it must still be early even by naval standards, and no one was about yet. Jack smiled to think of Pullings’ puppyish enthusiasm and his disappointment at missing Stephen the previous day. He would doubtless turn up again with all the _Thisbe_ ’s young gentlemen in tow, a makeshift choir whose lark-like voices, raised in carol, belied their cheerfully grubby nature.

Stephen twitched violently and muttered something too inarticulate to make out. Jack was fairly sure that Stephen did not know he talked in his sleep, a potentially fatal fault in any intelligence agent, even one who – as far as Jack could tell – had never taken a mistress nor even spent a night with any of the amiable ladies of easy virtue with whom naval ports abounded. Jack had been half-minded many a time to warn Stephen how copious and intelligible were the words babbled into the darkness. He would certainly have done so had he been sure that it would provoke Stephen into abandoning his dangerous covert profession.

He pushed the damp hair from Stephen’s forehead and murmured soothingly – a familiar litany of nonsensical promises and endearments that Stephen would never remember afterwards – until the nightmare loosened its grip. If the Doctor were kept on board for months on end, hurried back by Marine guards from his naturalising expeditions, with no conspiracies, no governments to overthrow or desperate missions at the dark of the moon to give his life urgency, he would be miserable; Jack knew that perfectly well. He had a sudden memory of the goldfinch that Sophie had bought for the girls many years before, a bird that had beaten at the bars of its cage until its flight-feathers were broken and its chest bloodied. Sophie had tried and tried to tame it with kindness, until one day Stephen had turned up, sunburnt from some unmentioned journey, and she had taken one look at his face, carried the cage out into the garden and opened the door.

Stephen mumbled and turned over, settling back into a half-curl. Jack, his limbs now freed, slid carefully off the mattress and tried to stand, but the weakness of his legs startled him; he crouched down and clung to the cold iron of the bed-frame for a minute until his muscles stopped trembling and his vision cleared.

The noise had not awakened Stephen, who was a heavy sleeper once sleep finally claimed him, and who lay prone in an attitude somehow troubling, perhaps from its vulnerability. Jack watched him for a full minute before he recognised the superficial cause of his own uneasiness: Stephen had lain down in his shirt of the previous day, likely his shirt of several previous days to judge by its condition, and in the restlessness of his nightmares it had ridden up around his middle, exposing his thin dusty legs. It was natural that there should be something troubling about watching a naked man sleep, even if the man was only Stephen and even if the only one likely to interrupt the vigil was Killick. Jack reached out very tentatively, seized the hem of the shirt and tugged it down far enough to preserve modesty – although whose modesty was thus preserved he would have been hard pressed to say, Stephen having no concept of personal shame and Killick no expectation of it.

The light from the window was strengthening steadily. Jack walked slowly and haltingly as far as the window seat, where he sank down on the age-worn wood, breathing heavily. Even in that peri-dawn glow he could feel the rising heat; it would be another blazing day, utterly alien to his concept of Christmas, a concept set firm and unalterable by an English boyhood. A buzzard circled the house, mewling, its kittenish cries harsh beside his memories of robins’ liquid trills.

But – and here Jack checked his self-pitying nostalgia, ignoble in anyone and particularly foolish in one born to peregrination – even if the weather did not suit his notion of midwinter, there would still be goose, and plum pudding too if his convalescent stomach could possibly hold it, and then the midshipmen’s thoughtless happy carols. And Stephen, so often missing without explanation, had come home in time. His gentle dreamless wheezing, the sound of peacefulness itself, was filling the quiet room.

Jack leant his head against the window-frame and waited without impatience for the world to wake up.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the carol (for the full C of E effect, sing it to the tune called "Noel"):
> 
>  _It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old,  
>  From angels bending near the earth, to touch their harps of gold:  
> “Peace on the earth, goodwill to all, from heaven’s all-gracious king.”  
> The world in solemn stillness lay, to hear the angels sing._


End file.
